


for a shot in the dark

by plotdevice



Category: THE9 (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV), 青春有你2
Genre: F/F, Gender Non-Conforming Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26230954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plotdevice/pseuds/plotdevice
Summary: In her defence, it was difficult to tell when girls were being serious about approaching her.
Relationships: Kong Xue'er/Liu Yuxin, Liu Yuxin & Lin Fan, Liu Yuxin/Lu Keran, Liu Yuxin/Yu Yan (Idol Producer), Liu Yuxin/Zeng Keni
Comments: 14
Kudos: 46
Collections: Girl Group Jukebox - Mixtape Round





	for a shot in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Written for GG Jukebox Mixtape Round, inspired by Some Things Never Seem to Fucking Work by Solange. Title from Dev Hynes' Palo Alto.

In the locker room she caught Lu Keran looking at her once, twice, and then a third time before she finally managed to make eye contact. "What?" she said, half-smiling, and Keran grinned back at her crookedly.

"Nothing," she said, looking only a little embarrassed. "You really don't need to wear one?" 

"Wear..."

Keran gestured at her chest, and it took Yuxin a few more seconds, during which Keran stripped off her compression top, to understand. "Oh! The..." Heat was rushing to her face, the way it did every time she talked about something like this. "I--I've never had to, I guess. When I was younger, I had to work out my upper body, and that makes it... the size... go down a lot. I can just wear regular... you know." 

"Hm." Yuxin was coming to learn that Keran said very little most of the time, even when they weren't practicing; her body was more eloquent, her soft face, the twitch of her mouth or her eyebrows. "Maybe I should have gone into popping instead of fencing. But my parents probably would have been even more upset about that." She glanced over at Yuxin, not bothering to hide the way she was looking now, her admiring open appraisal of Yuxin's body. It wasn't that she wasn't used to being looked at that way but rather that she wasn't used to it coming from someone who had the experience to put behind it. A knot of sweet tension built in her, a feeling that she took a moment to identify as desire; it had never been like this before. 

"You're--ah, really? I don't think we..." She trailed off. How to say it?

"I'm open to lots of things," Keran said easily. Yuxin's gaze caught on her slender hands, and then at the pink crook of her mouth. "I think we could try, right?" 

"I've never... with...." 

It turned out that "never" didn't matter; she might have never, but Keran had, and even more than that she was just easy to be with. The times Yuxin had done this before there had always been a level of self-consciousness that superceded enjoyment, a dissociation that pulled her from her body; but Keran knew how to touch her, and how not to. In the corner they had found, hidden away from cameras, Yuxin learned that she could make other girls come apart on her fingers too, and that kissing someone who was taller than her didn't mean she had to give up the upper hand. Keran melted into her, sweet and cool, and it felt nothing like she'd had before. 

Afterwards, Keran said, "Would you do it again?" Their eyes met; Yuxin didn't know what expression was on her face, but it brought amusement to Keran's face, a light exhaled breath that was her equivalent of a laugh. "Not with me, not like that. You said never, but you liked it, right?"

The fuck had loosened the tension in her shoulders, and she breathed in deeply, trying to keep that gentleness before she answered. "I was only with one person before, and she..." She had meant to finish the sentence; she wanted to say something that didn't make it sound like what it was. 

But of course Keran knew what she was talking about. She put a hand on Yuxin's shoulder. Her voice had that peculiar, gentle quality, a rasp that suited her, as she said, "Okay. So better reason to do it with someone who knows next time, right? Because it felt good this time." 

With effort, Yuxin unclenched her jaw. "Right." It was an idea she'd have to get used to.

\--

In her defence, it was difficult to tell when girls were being serious about approaching her. She'd spent years being the stand-in boyfriend both as a joke and in a very serious way she didn't want to recreate anymore, so when Zeng Keni made a joke about wanting her attention for the fortieth time Yuxin laughed it off the way she always did. Most girls _liked_ flirting; they flirted with each other all the time, for practice or for fun or just because they didn't know what they were doing, and she was familiar with being on the receiving end. It was a role she knew how to play and brush off.

It wasn't until she got home, into the dorm, lying awake going over the events of the day, that the interaction pinged her again. Keni was flirty, to be sure, but she hadn't treated Keran the way she was treating Yuxin. And it might have been nothing--Keran's energy was very different--but it might have been... 

At rehearsal the next day, when Keni said, half-joking, in the whining tone she adopted to be playful, "I just wanted Liu Yuxin to pay attention to me, and now even though she's here she's just spending all her time practicing!" Yuxin didn't say anything. She made eye contact with Keni through the mirror, and what she saw sent a jolt through her. It _was_ something serious--or--not serious like that. But it was adult, it was mature. She remembered suddenly that Zeng Keni was four years older than her. Yuxin had been out her entire life, but Keni was a woman. She had to know what she wanted. No one acted like that if they didn't.

It was based only on this thought that she volunteered to go down to the vending machine in the basement with Keni that night. Keni played it up, as Yuxin had suspected she would, proclaiming her delight to the entire floor, but when they got into the elevator she was more subdued until she caught Yuxin's glance and the corners of her mouth curled up. "Finally, the great Liu-laoshi has decided to pay attention to me!" she said, grinning. "I feel so honoured! What made you deign to spend time with such a lowly mortal, laoshi?" 

Yuxin faltered. She'd been so certain of this just a few hours before, but now, confronted by the harsh fluorescent lights of the elevator and Keni's tall, willowy figure, she wasn't so sure. She settled for a shrug. "Why not?" Normally she was a bit more diplomatic, better at playing these social games, but when she got caught off guard she said things without the thought behind them.

"Ah, that's not how you make a girl feel special, Liu Yuxin," Keni said, smiling. "You have to be a little more gentle, you know? I'm not a why not." 

Yuxin looked up at her, _really_ looked, and Keni kept steady eye contact, still with that same bright smile. The elevator bell dinged, and the door opened. They stepped out.

At the vending machine, Keni said, "I can't decide what to get! Sweet or salty? Or spicy? What do you like?" 

They looked at the selections for a moment. Yuxin said, "You should get what you want."

"You're not really the type to make decisions like that, are you?" Keni's voice held a wry smile. The room was dark; her face was lit only by the vending machine. 

Yuxin wanted to say, but didn't: _Are we just talking about vending machines?_ Instead, she said: "I think it's better for people to make their own decisions." 

"Okay," Keni said. She put a hand on Yuxin's arm, and Yuxin's entire body thrilled to it; they turned so that Yuxin's back was to the vending machine, and then Keni leaned down and kissed her. "Clear enough?" she said.

Yuxin's hands had found their way to Keni's throat, her collarbone; now she dragged them down to her waist, using her fingertips deliberately and enjoying the resulting shiver. "With me, you have to be direct." It wasn't an apology, but it was close.

"I can do that," Keni said. She was still smiling when they kissed again. 

It was the second time, now, that Yuxin had fucked a girl so much taller than her, but again it didn't seem to matter. Keni liked having fun, exulted in feeling good; she took pleasure out of whatever Yuxin did and that amplified the experience hundredfold. 

When Keni was fixing her clothes and putting them back in place, she said, "I really thought you weren't going to pick up the hint." Yuxin looked up at her from where she was tying her shoes. The light from the vending machine cast blue shadows across her face.

"Girls who play around like that aren't usually... They don't want it like that," she said mildly. "And the ones that do aren't like you."

"What do you mean, the ones that do?" 

There was only one other experience, aside from Keran, that Yuxin could draw on; but it was an experience of many years, an ongoing experience, even, one that flared anew every time she passed Xueer in the hallway. She didn't want to talk about it. "You know," she said vaguely. 

But clearly Keni didn't, which was just as well. Yuxin wondered if she was the one living in an alternate universe--if she saw things that weren't there. It felt like that, too often, that when she reached out the things she knew to be true took such alien shapes in their retelling that they felt beyond belief, beyond reckoning. 

When they went back up, Keni was smiling so brightly that Yuxin thought for sure everyone would know what had happened. In reality the only person who acted as if anything was out of the ordinary was Yu Yan, who said nothing at all and gave them both a dark look before smiling when Chengxuan tugged her sleeve. 

It was this that made her alien. It was hard to predict effects.

\--

When it happened, she didn't notice; she might not have noticed anything strange at all if not for coming around a corner one day to hear Nai Wan's furious whisper: "And next time, you're going to _act normal_!" She could almost imagine the finger wagging that accompanied it, the expression that creased her catlike face. Who was she talking to? Yuxin didn't want to turn the corner and find out; she wanted to go into an empty practice room and rehearse the theme song another thousand times until her ears rang with it. 

"I'm being normal!" someone whined. Not just someone--it was unmistakably Lin Fan, who was impossible to miss not just because they got grouped together so easily but because of the irrepressible childlike personality that Yuxin tried her hardest not to envy and disdain in equal measure. In her more self-indulgent flights of bad metaphor she thought of them as mirror images: Lin Fan was what she couldn't be.

"She's too nice and too oblivious to notice anything, but you're being super weird. Get it together." A light smack and the sound of plastic, probably from Nai Wan onto those windbreakers Lin Fan liked to wear. "She's literally helping you!"

"I can't help it! Every time I look at her I think about how she slept with Lu Keran and it's weird!" 

Then she knew who they were talking about: it was her. 

There wasn't time to focus on it; she cast it out of her mind until one night when it came just her and Lin Fan in the only open practice room. She was working on her facial expressions, and Lin Fan was practicing the choreography, a single move over and over again, a transition that she got right nine times and fumbled spectacularly every tenth. Yuxin had been doing well so far without thinking about it, the whispers from around the corner--there were always whispers, and people were always talking. But it was unavoidable now that they were, just the two of them, in the same room, and even though they were both practicing she could see the flinch and twitch every time Lin Fan's eyes landed on hers in the mirror, the fluorescent lighting highlighting every bead of sweat that went down her neck.

Yuxin wasn't the type to be pushed to an edge, and she wasn't the type for confrontations. And she was done for the night, anyway, so when she was about to grab her stuff and head out she was stopped only by Lin Fan saying, out of breath, "Wait!" 

Yuxin stood by the door. 

"I just want to know!" Lin Fan said. Her mouth was turned down in a furious pout. They were close to the same age, Lin Fan only maybe a year younger, and their trajectories were remarkably similar, so how was it that Yuxin felt so old compared to her? This was supposed to be the girl who traveled to another country to sustain her career, and she looked like nothing so much as a dejected schoolchild. 

Then the words sank in. "You want to know... what?"

"Why--with--you--together--" The words burst out of her in a jumble. "Why was it _you_?" she said finally, looking miserable. The exertion of practice had made her sweat; her hair was flat against her skull. She was astonishingly good-looking and yet bedraggled, a mournful puppy with huge pleading eyes. 

"Why was what me?" How to respond to this? 

"With Lu Keran!" 

Yuxin felt her features smooth themselves into blankness. She didn't say anything. 

"I just don't get it! Like--she could have--but--you?" She paused. "Not that you're not good-looking! But--" Her shoulders slumped. A moment passed. Then she said: "She didn't even tell me. She told Nai Wan instead." 

Looking at this scene, Yuxin didn't know how to respond. "That's really--" she started, and was cut off again.

"It's just--I thought we told each other things. I told her all about me and--uh..." She trailed off, blushing. 

"I think I need to go now," Yuxin told her at last, when the silence had stretched out for too long. 

"Ah, wait!" Lin Fan said. She crossed her arms across her chest, frowning. "Let me just try something first." She stalked forward until Yuxin felt the door at her back. It wasn't threatening, except maybe in the way anyone in her space was threatening, but Lin Fan was so harmless. Not even having her personal space invaded was setting off Yuxin's alarms. They stared at each other, almost nose to nose, until Lin Fan leaned forward and pressed a smacking kiss to her mouth. 

Yuxin was so startled she stumbled back and fell, sitting on the floor; the door hadn't been fully closed or open, and it provided no support for her. "What the..." she said in English, almost to herself.

"See, it couldn't have been that good," Lin Fan said, still frowning down at her. " _I_ don't want to do it again." 

"That's not--you're ridiculous." What had just happened? The late hour, the windowless rooms, the fluorescent lights made it all seem like a feverish dream. She found herself almost laughing at the absurdity of the scenario, her mouth curling up despite itself.

Lin Fan, catching the edge of her smile, laughed too, a bright sound that rang all the louder for how empty the building was. It was infectious; soon both of them were laughing for no reason, curled up on the practice room floor.

When they stopped, to catch their breath, Lin Fan smacked her on the arm to get her attention. "Hey," she said, and waited until Yuxin met her eyes. "I was acting weird, so... I'm sorry. I know it wasn't okay."

"I really didn't notice." 

"But still. And just now, too. It's just--even though--" It was clear that she felt awkward trying to find the words. "I never met... uh... Like, even though girls in my group are..." 

Yuxin didn't want to hear her struggle through another ten minutes of this. "Lu Keran was my first time too. With another T." She took a deep breath and thought about saying: _or with anyone else_ , but she wasn't prepared to go through it, not with Xueer so close. Just telling Keran had been a mistake. 

Even that declaration was enough to make Lin Fan's eyes bug out of her head. "Really?" Yuxin shrugged. After a moment, Lin Fan shrugged too. "I mean, whatever! When else are you going to do it, right?" 

She wondered if Lin Fan would take that attitude, too, but she seemed to have her eyes set elsewhere. Anyway, it didn't matter. Lin Fan had been half right. This was the best way to do it, the best time, but it wasn't something she could take a blase attitude towards: after all, to the end, her eyes were set to the top.

\--

By the time the original song stages came around, they'd all had ample time to be in proximity of each other, to interact in various ways big and small, and yet there was still something thrilling about getting to be in the same group as Yu Yan, whom she'd been watching since the beginning. It was clear that Yu Yan felt the same way, though she was even less expressive than Yuxin and thus showed it in stranger ways. One night in the practice room, when they were sitting against the wall catching their breath, she said, "So you and Zeng Keni?" 

Yuxin's body seized up; it was only self control that kept her from spitting out the water of which she'd taken a swig right before the question had been asked. "How did you..."

"I can just tell. And she's..." She waved a hand dismissively. "You know."

Yuxin looked at her for a second. She wanted to ask, but asking personal questions usually meant having to share something personal in return. She decided to venture forth anyway. "Have you and she...?" 

Yu Yan's sharp eyes cut over to her. "Is it that obvious?" she asked, almost too stridently. She seemed to remember herself and pulled back. With more restraint she said, "We were supposed to debut together once on a show like this. So there was a time when..." She shook her head. "It was a long time ago, but she's still the same in a lot of ways." 

"But you don't still...?" 

"It wasn't really ever like that for her. She likes fun, you know? She's like that." Yuxin didn't point out what Yu Yan hadn't said; she was afraid of Yu Yan's sharp eyes. Her gaze made everything harsher; that was why it felt so direct when she continued, "You've been getting around, haven't you?" 

"I wouldn't say that..."

"No, I mean." She waved a hand. "Not compared to some of the girls around here. And you're better at keeping it under wraps. But you're like me, so I can tell." 

Yuxin didn't have to say anything. She knew what Yu Yan meant. The moment passed in silence. 

Then Yu Yan said, "It's too bad we can't try."

Yuxin looked at her; she hadn't consciously been thinking about it until Yu Yan said it, but now that it had been said she realised she'd been thinking about it all this time. How could she be this old and still not realise when her fascination crossed the line into attraction? But something about Yu Yan was different from the women she'd wanted before, and she couldn't put her finger on it. It was this that pushed her into saying, "Why not?" 

"Because we're both... you know." Yu Yan waved her hand again. Yuxin stared at her. "You're going to make me say it like this? What kind of girl do you think I am?" She was half-joking, Yuxin could tell, but about what?

"What are you talking about?" 

"Because we're both tops, Liu Yuxin, read the room!" So that's what it had been: the energy Yuxin had felt coming off her this entire time. They spent so much time speaking in euphemism for the camera that to hear someone say it so nakedly was embarrassing.

She looked down at her hands, their bruised knuckles, the short, round nails. For some reason she remembered what Keran had said, all the way back then, that first time. It echoed in her head. _I'm open to lots of things._ She let it bounce around for a little bit before she opened her mouth: "I'm... open." 

Yu Yan's eyes caught hers again, this time in shock. "Seriously?"

"Why not try?" It was an uncharacteristically reckless move, but she felt that at least in this, she had nothing to lose.

That was how they found themselves in Yuxin's empty dorm. Yu Yan was an aggressive kisser, which Yuxin had expected, but her hands were very gentle, which she had not; and her fingers were clever and calloused, and she took direction well. When Yuxin went down on her, she threaded her fingers into Yuxin's hair and rode her face until she came, cursing under her breath, her legs shaking. 

"You're good at that," she said after, as they passed a bottle of water between them. "I thought it would be weird, but--it _was_ good."

"Thanks." It came out dry, because she didn't know how else to accept the compliment. 

"I said you got around before, but you're really not like that, huh." 

This was where the transaction came back. Vulnerability for vulnerability. Somehow it didn't feel so scary if it were with Yu Yan, who felt so much like her. "Before I came here, I'd only ever been with one person." 

Yu Yan wasn't subtle; the shock painted itself across her face. "Really?" She thought for a moment. "Well, I guess it makes sense. You seem like the long term type. You're not still together? If it'd been so long, then why...?" 

Yuxin grimaced. "It wasn't... We weren't together. She's..."

Yu Yan sat up then to look at her. To study her face. The sheet she'd been using to cover herself slipped off and left her unselfconscious in her nakedness. "It was someone here," she said finally. It wasn't a question. And it was toneless, not because she didn't care but because she was thinking so hard; Yuxin could see it in her furrowed brow. She didn't say anything in return. "Wow," Yu Yan said finally. "I thought that was just one of those rumours because you're T. You know, Kong Xueer didn't seem like the type to get close to a girl. I guess everyone can surprise you."

Yuxin wanted to say: _it wasn't like that_. But what had it been like? At this point, even she couldn't say. Whatever she'd thought of it while it was happening had disproven itself over and over, and now looking back there had been red flags she hadn't had the experience to notice. She settled for saying, "It was complicated," and forestalled Yu Yan's piercing gaze by putting her shirt back on. 

\--

"I'm going to be sick," Xueer said, and dry-heaved into the toilet. She wasn't going to be; she got nervous nausea before anything big happened. The last time it had been this bad was the night before the Ladybees finale, Yuxin thought, though there was certainly enough space between then and now that things might have changed. 

"You're not," Jin Zihan said from next to her, patting her back, and somewhere off to the side, Zhao Xiaotang said, strident as ever,

"You won't be _sick_! If you actually throw up you're going to look terrible tomorrow. What if you throw up on stage?" 

Xiaotang hadn't known her long enough to know she wouldn't do that, Yuxin thought. And then she thought: _why am I here?_ There was no reason for it. There were almost six girls crammed into this tiny bathroom, and none of them needed to be her. Xiaotang had dragged her for no reason. 

"I think maybe everyone crowding her is making it worse," she said. "I'm going to get out of the bathroom. Xueer, I'll be in my room if you need me." Xueer wasn't going to come find her, but not saying it would have made it more suspicious.

The problem was that Xueer did come find her, and that too in the middle of packing her bags. Everyone was emptying their things, the girls who had gone from 109 to sixty to ever smaller numbers finally dwindling to zero, and the dorm would finally be left alone. 

When the knock on the door sounded, Yuxin looked up. Her eyes went round when she saw Xueer, and she struggled to bring her emotions back down. "You--" she said, and then collected herself. "Are you feeling better?" 

"A little," Xueer said. She still looked peaky around the edges, but that would fade by tomorrow.

"You're worried?"

"You're not?" Xueer said in disbelief. Then she laughed. "What am I saying? Of course you're not."

She wanted to deny it, but the truth was that the worry and anxiety had sloughed off her long before her ranking started to rise. "I don't decide the final numbers," she said. "And anyway, the results..." Their eyes met.

"It's not like last time," Xueer said.

Was Yuxin reading the layers into that statement? She decided that if she were, it was okay. She'd never met anyone who overthought more than Xueer, anyway. "Yes," she agreed. "It's very different." She smoothed down the shirt she was folding. Out the window, she could see the faint outline of the rollercoasters she'd never gotten to ride. Once, a long time ago, when she was still in school, she remembered going to an amusement park with her parents. Her mother had been reluctant to get on and then furious when she'd gotten off it, upset that her hair was mussed beyond fixing; they'd spent the rest of the day trying to placate her.

Why was she thinking about this now? It was simply that the future was too enormous to hold in herself. Tomorrow everything changed.

"Are you ready for it?" Xueer said, cutting into her reverie. Their eyes met.

All this time she'd spent thinking around this relationship, playing with it in her head, different ways it could have gone, all the way back to the beginning in 2016 up until that first time they'd met again here. Giving herself all this pain, working herself up into her own head. All the other people she'd met and compared to what it had been like with Xueer. Things were already different. Her comparison point had expanded beyond that world. 

And yet. Their pasts were inextricable, their futures intertwined. What did it matter if it hadn't worked out? The pain could be worked through, the same way anything could. It was only up to her.

"Yes," she said.


End file.
